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Wednesday, 31 July 2013

The verbal attacks on Cécile Kyenge are shocking, even in a country where racism is part of everyday life

Cécile Kyenge at a
debate earlier this month. Despite many Italians' love of all things
foreign, racism is common. Photograph: Massimiliano Schiazza/EPA

The events of the last few weeks have proved, beyond doubt, that Italy has a serious problem with racism. Bananas have been thrown at Cécile Kyenge, Italy's first black government minister. A (female) councillor for the Northern League has said she should be raped. A Northern League senator has likened her to an orangutan. Last week the AC Milan footballer, Kevin Constant, walked off the pitch after a barrage of abuse, just as Kevin-Prince Boateng did earlier this year.
The
Northern League is, admittedly, a minority party, usually gaining only
between five and 10% of the national vote. And other political parties
have expressed solidarity with Kyenge. But anyone who has listened to
Italian political debate, or worse, stood in an Italian football
stadium, knows that Italy simply isn't a tolerant place. This is a
country where a recent prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, thought it hilarious to joke that Obama had a decent suntan. The racism isn't restricted to right or left, old or young, rural or urban: it is noticeable everywhere.
The reasons are pretty obvious. As Italians will constantly tell you, theirs is an incredibly provincial country. Campanilismo
– the attachment to one's local belltower – is one of the reasons the
place is so charming: people often stay put, they're rooted rather than
rootless. All over the country, even in a tiny village, you'll see caput mundi
graffitied on walls, suggesting that this sleepy place is considered
the capital of the world. The downside is that outsiders are treated as
aliens, if not enemies.
Through the centuries Italy has been, not a
colonial power, but a colony, a plaything of the superpowers. So with
the exception of small parts of Somalia, no other country speaks
Italian. Unlike France, Britain, Portugal or Spain, there's no large
diaspora of Italian speakers who can immediately integrate into the
"mother country", knowing already its literature and history. So the
peninsula remains insular, an astonishingly monocultural,
monoconfessional place.
There are other reasons for the racism: the legacy of fascism and the continuing adulation of Benito Mussolini;
the tangible insecurity, even sense of inferiority, of many Italians;
widespread economic misery for at least the last decade; and a political
class that is absurdly ignorant. But perhaps the most interesting
explanation for racism comes from an Italian mate of mine who's an
armchair anthropologist. He maintains that in a country that is famously
lawless, in which rules are often wilfully ignored, everyone is oddly
very conformist in other ways: all wearing the same fashionable colour,
or eating the same food at the same festivals. Italy simply isn't a
country of eccentricity, or a place where difference or diversity are
accepted, let alone cherished. I once tried to experiment by putting an
unorthodox topping on my pizza and was harangued by irate mates as if
I'd committed a terrible crime.
The conundrum of Italian racism is
that Italy, ever a country of contradictions, is also a place of
remarkable generosity and hospitality. I know it's easy for a white
Englishman to say that, but centuries of visitors have noted Italians' esterofilia,
their love of all things foreign. The dignity and intelligence of
Kyenge in the face of recent attacks may yet remind Italians that they
have a reputation for loving, rather than fearing, those from afar.Tobias Jones's Italian novel, Death of a Showgirl, has just been published by Faber